When dispatching important communications (contracts, legal notices, deeds, etc.), the sender and recipient of a mail piece are both often very interested in knowing when the mail piece was deposited with the carrier for delivery and in tracking the progress of the mail piece until it is received by the recipient.
No matter what form of postage payment a sender utilizes, there exists no convenient way for the sender to receive proof that a particular mail piece was deposited with the postal authority on a given day. If the sender utilizes permit payment methods, then the date of deposit of the batch mailing with the postal authority will not confirm that a particular mail piece was contained with that batch. If the sender utilizes stamps, then the sender has even less proof of when the envelope was deposited. If the sender utilizes a postage meter, then the mail piece does contain a date on which the postage was applied to the mail piece. However, this does not necessarily correspond to the date when the mail piece was deposited for delivery because the sender may process the mail piece on one day and deposit it with the postal authority on another day.
On the other hand, the sender may visit the post office window and make payment for first class postage, deposit the mail piece with the postal authority and request a receipt from the post office window clerk. However, this receipt will only evidence that a given amount of postage was dispensed on a given date. There is no relationship between the postage, the date and the recipient. As an added option, the sender may request special services, such as: certified mail delivery, priority mail or the like. In this instance, a unique identification number is issued by the postal authority, typically by placing it on the certified mail label or the priority mail label (as shown in FIGS. 2 and 3, respectively), and the sender must fill out additional paper work (the label) and pay a premium for these special services. In this case, the sender does receive a receipt that corresponds to a particular mail piece. However, this process is: (i) time consuming for both the sender and the postal authority; (ii) costly for both the sender and the postal authority; and (iii) only available during the postal authority's normal working hours.
Therefore, there is a need for a more cost effective and efficient system for providing senders with proof of deposit of a mail piece with the postal authority.